In order to manage the challenges brought about by the rapid growth of mobile broadband traffic and provide better data services for end users, operators worldwide have incorporated UMTS for GSM 900MHz re-farming to deploy their networks. More than half of these operators, however, own less than 5 MHz bandwidth of contiguous spectrum. Scalable UMTS helps operators realize the benefits of efficient spectrum re-farming, allowing them to maximize their return on network investments.

Scalable UMMTS with half bandwidth UMTS can enable easier and more flexible GSM/UMTS 900 re-farming. Scalable UMTS can also be jointly deployed with Huawei's UMTS Flexible Carrier Bandwidth solution to save spectrum in deploying small cells. This improves network capacity and user experience in internet hotspots.

Huawei and Qualcomm have successfully completed end-to-end testing of a Scalable UMTS prototype in November 2012 at Huawei's Shanghai laboratory facilities. The testing showed that Scalable UMTS in a half-bandwidth channel provides the same spectral efficiency as normal UMTS.

Ying Weimin, Huawei President for GSM/UMTS/LTE Wireless Networks, said: "We are honored to have achieved this key milestone in partnership with Qualcomm. The industry chain supporting the delivery of Scalable UMTS is becoming more and more mature, making it possible for such innovations to catch up with our customers' demands. We expect a large-scale commercialization of Scalable UMTS to be achieved in the near future."
"We are working with Huawei to drive the UMTS/HSPA evolution and commercial deployment of Scalable UMTS," said Samir Soliman, Vice President of Technology at Qualcomm Research, Qualcomm Technologies' R&D division. "As part of Qualcomm's 1000x initiative to address the wireless industry's unprecedented data demand, Scalable UMTS was designed to help operators maximize the data capacity and value of their existing spectrum. With varied use cases of Scalable UMTS, this band-agnostic technology is beneficial to both emerging and developed regions. In emerging regions of the world, Scalable UMTS can accelerate GSM re-farming, whereas in developed regions, the technology enables efficient utilization of spectrum resources."
Huawei and Qualcomm have verified this feature using Huawei's Ascend P1 Smartphone at the Huawei Shanghai laboratory in January 2013.

Scalable UMTS is currently a 3GPP Release 12 study item and will be commercially available from Huawei.

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